High street retailer John Lewis, which reported a record week for sales driven by the “Black Friday” consumer spending spree, has cemented its place as the UK’s most-beloved retailer.

Its managing director, Andy Street, has been named Britain’s most admired leader in a new report, which surveyed bosses at the UK’s most successful companies.

Street, a lifer at John Lewis, impressed his peers with his leadership savvy, according to business magazine Management Today, which compiled the research.

John Lewis’ turnover overtook rival M&S's UK sales last year, hitting £9bn, and Street’s £7m spend on a Christmas ad featuring Sam, a little boy, and his best friend Monty the Penguin, has also proved a smash hit with shoppers. The ad has now received 18m views on Youtube.

Street told MT that his success in the Most Admired leader category is down to the accessibility of John Lewis. “We have anticipated the changes in our customers’ behaviour – their tastes and practices – and we’ve acted and stayed ahead of the curve.”

Street seized the “most admired” crown from Sainsbury’s boss Justin King, last year’s winner of the accolade. He has even beaten stiff competition within his own organisation, outranking Sir Charlie Mayfield, John Lewis chairman.

“John Lewis is the post-crash darling of the UK high street,” Matthew Gwyther, Management Today editor, told the Daily Telegraph. “It is on a real roll at the moment. In a dog-eat-dog retail world of horse meat scandals, zero hours contracts, suppliers waiting 100 days to get paid and empty high streets, JLP is the act people admire and wish to emulate.”

John Lewis’s has frequently appeared in the headlines for its successful use of the employee ownership model but Street has also courted his fair share of controversy. Earlier this year, he was forced to publicly apologise for an outburst in which he called France “sclerotic, hopeless and downbeat”.

Despite the negative publicity that ensued, Street has managed to maintain his reputation as the “gentleman retailer”.

John Lewis took 24.8pc of the free vote, in which companies vote for their favourite firms, regardless of sector, beating Rolls-Royce, Unilver and Dyson by some margin. In the official ranking, in which firms can only judge their peers, John Lewis comes fifth.

The overall winner of Britain’s Most Admired Company is Johnson Matthey, the world’s largest maker of automotive catalytic converters. High street retailer Next took second place, despite its profit warning earlier this year. In third place, EasyJet beat rival Ryanair by 82 places.

The Management Today Britain’s Most Admired Companies research is calculated by asking the largest companies in 26 different sectors to name their leading ten peers across nine criteria, ranging from the quality of management, the company’s performance as an investment, the quality of its goods and services and the company’s financial soundness. This is the 24th year of the report.